Sr. Liz: Becoming Salvatorian

I can’t speak for others, but my experience in becoming Salvatorian is both simple and amazing – at least to me!. Back when I was a senior in high school and first got the notion of entering the convent I really had no idea where to go or what to do about this desire. I had no contact with nuns except for every summer when Benedictines would come from the Villa Scholastica in Duluth about 25 miles away to teach for two weeks. It didn’t even occur to me to join them. Under pressure from my mother, however, I decided to join the Benedictines. She didn’t know the difference between one community and another and neither did I. I spent about two weeks with the Benedictines but was very unhappy; it just didn’t feel right.

My godmother used to send me her past issues of a now-defunct magazine called Sacred Heart Messenger. I recall looking on the back pages which had multiple, one-inch-high ads for various religious communities. I honed in on Sisters of the Divine Savior. Why? The name attracted me and they weren’t tied to doing only nursing or teaching. I fully believe that God put the idea in my head/heart about being a religious, and used that ad in that magazine to draw me to where he wanted me to be: with the Sisters of the Divine Savior. I was just a very shy girl from a very small town in northern Minnesota who probably would have gotten a secretarial job of some kind and stayed right there as some of my friends did. Instead, God gave me a desire and the grace to follow it, and I eventually moved to Milwaukee to join the Salvatorians. Although at times over the years I have doubted my vocation, just as most married couples at times have their doubts, I always felt called back to this community.

Sr. Elizabeth Ann Christensen, SDS (Sr. Liz)